Spousal maintenance raises concern

Women using N.S. service say closures, moves make it harder to find deadbeat dads

More stories of confusion and uncertainty emerged Tuesday over the NDP government moving the offices and staff tasked with tracking down deadbeat dads.

As of this month, the Justice Department has closed all its maintenance enforcement offices — in Amherst, Sydney, Dartmouth, Kentville and New Glasgow — to the public. The service is to be relocated to New Waterford, with a new office opening in the spring.

Carolyn Stewart of Halifax, who last received a payment in August and is now owed $18,000, said Tuesday that she just talked to her caseworker in the Amherst office Monday and was told her file would be moved to Cape Breton. The caseworker, like others on the mainland, isn’t making the move to the new office.

Stewart said she didn’t realize the Cape Breton office isn’t open yet.

“It’s going to take somebody quite a while to get up to speed, and my biggest concern is that whoever gets assigned to it won’t have the behavioural history of the payer that my caseworker was familiar with,” Stewart said.

Stewart said she’s in a better position than many parents waiting for support payments because she has a good job at an information technology consulting company.

“But collectively, yeah, I think we’re all going to be in a worse situation now unless the minister steps up quickly.”

Justice Department figures showed that, as of March 31, 2011, there were more than 15,000 cases in the province’s maintenance enforcement program, which collects and distributes court-ordered payments like spousal support. More than 9,000 cases were in arrears, by a total amount of $81 million by Dec. 31, 2011, according to the department.

A single mother quoted Tuesday in The Chronicle Herald said she had been waiting six weeks to hear from a caseworker after leaving several voice messages and was having problems with the program’s 1-800 number.

Justice Minister Ross Landry said Tuesday he called the woman and left a message expressing his concern about her situation.

Another woman contacted The Chronicle Herald on Tuesday saying she also had trouble with the automated telephone message system.

Rachelle Purcell said in an interview that she’s tired of getting the runaround while chasing the court-ordered payments for her teenage daughter. The last payment she received arrived Nov. 12, and arrears total about $9,600, she said.

“I can’t get hold of one person,” she said, referring to enforcement workers on her file. “They don’t call you back.”

Purcell said she tried contacting Landry’s office but couldn’t talk to the minister. She said she ended up getting someone in maintenance enforcement but was passed around and received no real help.

Landry said in an interview that he expected there would be hiccups in the transition to the consolidated office, but he thinks the change will improve the program by allowing for better co-ordination among employees.

He said the government is making changes designed to improve the program, noting that $81 million in arrears didn’t accumulate just while the NDP have been in office. Landry said some payers live outside the province, and the legal mechanisms to go after them didn’t exist until his government recently passed legislation.

Opposition critics pilloried the NDP government for problems with the program, especially during the transition.

“Sometimes I don’t think they’re thinking about the end-user, like the people who need the service,” said Liberal MLA Kelly Regan.

“If you’re getting maintenance enforcement, you count on that money. If it doesn’t show up, it’s a big deal, and if you can’t get a hold of the people who are supposed to help you get that money, then what good is the program?”

Progressive Conservative Leader Jamie Baillie was even more blunt.

“Let’s call it what it is — it’s incompetence,” he said. “It’s disgraceful incompetence that the NDP would allow a ‘hiccup’ in service to vulnerable people who need enforcement of child-care payments.”